Achilles’ Tortoise

MobileMe replacement June 17, 2011

Given the impending demise of MobileMe’s iDisk capabilities announced by Steve Jobs at the 2011 WWDC, I have been investigating the alternatives. I do realize that most Apple apps (iWork, iLife) will use the new “Documents in the Cloud” feature, but I wanted something more generic and usable regardless of the platform. Rather than use a grab-bag of tools, I decided to just buy some web hosting and try to use that.

First, I got hosting (from GoDaddy) and I have added several apps that can be automatically installed using the GoDaddy application management console. They include:

• A blog (WordPress)
• A forum (SimpleMachines)
• A wiki (MediaWiki)
• A content management system (Drupal)
• A URL shortener (YOURLS)

The URL shortener is kinda cool, check this out: http://thenerdis.me/u/1

I am currently still looking for something to replace the iDisk feature. I am a DropBox user (free account), and I have a hard time with the idea of paying $120 a year for 50GB of storage. This GoDaddy hosting account gave me 150GB with unlimited bandwidth and cost $144 for TWO years. Not including the ability to host applications and the theNerdIs.me domain name- it seems like a much better bargain than DropBox.

So, stay tuned… I will post again about how the search for an iDisk/DropBox replacement goes. Hopefully, I will be able to use the PHP/WebDAV extension…